"It was entirely crowdfunded. And I think that when people hear that, they're like, ‘Oh, like a portion of it was crowdfunded or something’. No, it was entirely crowdfunded." — Matthew Farmer, GlenWyvis Distillery

Podcast excerpts. Interview by Drew Hendry

Drew: In this episode, we're looking at the subject of good business through community ownership. And we're doing that with GlenWyvis, a Highland distillery funded in a very unconventional way and hearing about the unique challenges they face. I'm delighted to be joined by Matthew Farmer. We want to hear about how GlenWyvis was created through community ownership and your own journey to running it. What can you tell us about that?

Matthew: The distillery itself was started in 2015. When GlenWyvis as a community benefit society started it was all crowd-funded. And it was a very easy decision for me to throw a little bit of money into that pool and become an investor and get my t-shirt and all that. I was walking around with my ‘I own a Scottish distillery’ t-shirt and all that kind of stuff.

Drew: You talk about owning a tiny part of it. Of course, it's a really interesting, funding model that's been put in place for GlenWyvis isn't it.

Matthew: Yeah, it was entirely crowdfunded. And I think that when people hear that they're like, “Oh, like a portion of it was crowdfunded or something”. No, it was entirely crowdfunded.

Some people put in more money than others, of course, but the way the community benefit trust works is that everybody has an equal vote, one member, one vote. We are very reliant on our membership for funding and we would never have been able to get to where we are today without every single person, all the way from the £10,000 investors, all the way down to the £250.

Drew: Well, of course, those are the people who've invested the money to get started up, but the other people investing their time, the people that work here, the team that you've got, how important is it that they're invested in the vision, the goals of the distillery?

Matthew: Because you have such a small team everybody influenced the quality of the end product. If your distiller doesn't care about how good the whisky is, you're not going to end up with good whisky.

Drew: What are the biggest challenges of your business right now?

Matthew: The biggest challenge is probably funding. When you are a community benefits society, banks won't really touch you because of that. So, we have to go through some fairly unconventional means of raising money. And of course, whisky just in general ways is a fairly bad business model for the first 10 years.

You're filling all these casks, but then you're not selling them. They're just sitting there and accumulating and accumulating and accumulating and getting more and more expensive. So even in the best of times, the whisky industry is quite an expensive one to start. Never mind if you are trying to do it from this pool of funding that you're raising from the community.

Listen to the full Video Podcast to learn more about GlenWyvis Distillery, the unique way it was crowdfunded and the intricacies of managing a community ownership business of 3,500 people.

"We tend to employ people that it's their first time job and they're young and enthusiastic. No experience to then go on to bigger and better things through the training that we can provide for them here." — Holly Morrison, Inverness Kart Raceway

Podcast excerpts. Interview by Drew Hendry

Drew: In this episode, we're looking at the subject of good business and giving back, and we're doing that with Inverness Kart Raceway, a company designed around providing young people with new skills and future job opportunities. Tell me a bit about your business here.

Peter: Well, our business is running go-karts. We are a social enterprise. Our parent company is called Day One, a charity, a mentoring charity and they help young adults that maybe lost their way. We help them back on track and we'd give them, I wouldn't say a lifeline, but we're certainly a point in the right direction with a mentor.

Drew: Holly, what would it be you like most in the business?

Holly: I think it’s seeing young people grow, we tend to employ people that it's their first time job and they're young and enthusiastic. So, seeing them come through the door. No experience to then go on to bigger and better things through the training that we can provide for them here. And just exposure to work really.

Drew: You talked about the personal challenges that you faced to get this set up in the first place, what were the real hurdles for the business to overcome for you to get to where you are today?

Peter: For the first few years it was a honeymoon period. It was brilliant. And then it started to level off. And so, making sure that the charity had money was always at the forefront. The bottom line is always at the forefront of every meeting we ever have is how do we get on, how is the bottom line?

Listen to the full Video Podcast to learn more about Inverness Kart Raceway and the charity work the sports centre is built around.

"What we wanted to do was to embrace the local community and to make sure the local community was aware that an international success story, which is the Spey brand, was on their doorstep." — John McDonough, Speyside Distillery

Podcast excerpts. Interview by Drew Hendry

Drew: Originally a barley mill and croft dating back to the 1700s, after its closure in 1965 it's been subject to long-term and sensitive restoration and has been converted into a single malt distillery, which started producing spirit in 1990. Quality, tradition, community and family are the components for business success according to John Harvey McDonough. Indeed, his business is driven by family history. As in 2012, he realized his grandfather's dream of returning to distilling when his company Harvey's bought Speyside Distillers.

I asked him how important family values are to him and to the business.

John: I think it's integral to the success. I worked with IDV, with Diageo now, and I learned about brand marketing, but the core of our business is the ethics that my grandfather fed into myself and my father and my sister. So, the family element of that is absolutely critical and we stick to those family ethics and family drives. And that resonates I think throughout the Spey family now, the bigger family, which is all the people that work with us and help us.

Drew: The Harvey family have long established roots in the whisky trade stretching back to 1770 when John and Robert Harvey founded and operated distilleries in Glasgow. In the 1800s, the families established a distillery on Islay, which was eventually run by William Harvey until hit by a fire closely followed by William's death in 1936. How much of that Harvey family intergenerational drive for quality, played a part in where Speyside is now?

John: It plays a lot, so that the Harvey's family go back to 1770, built Yorker Distillery and Dundashill Distillery in Glasgow, both of which have gone, but in 1881 built Bruichladdich in Islay. My grandfather worked as a whisky trader; his wish was that we could come back into distilling. So, I'm pleased that we've been able to fulfil his wish with the Speyside Distillery. And it’s just honing the family ethics again, and the desire of the family to produce really high-quality single malt whisky.

Drew: In time the distillery itself also became 'Lagganmore' for the TV series 'Monarch of the Glen', popular for its depiction of the fictional community around it. But in the real community Speyside is investing heavily in the local area. For example, setting up The Snug, a high-end retail and tasting experience in nearby Aviemore. How is that going?

John: It's going pretty well. That's been very successful from day one. And what we wanted to do was to embrace the local community and to make sure the local community was aware that an international success story, which is the Spey brand, was on their doorstep. We wanted to embrace the distillery and expand the awareness through The Snug. So that's been very, very successful.

Listen to the full Video Podcast to learn more about Speyside Distillery and the family traditions which are the backbone to the business.

"People had lost this connection between the food on the shelf and where it had come from. So people would go into the supermarket, pick a pack off the shelf, not have a clue what was in it, whether it was any good for them, it just looked all right. And they would take it home and eat it." — Richard Jones, Farmer Jones Academy

Podcast excerpts. Interview by Drew Hendry

Drew: The title of this podcast episode is Good Business Nurturing the Next Generation. Tell us a bit about the setup of Farmer Jones Academy. What's the driving force behind the business model as well?

Sarah: Working with [local food producers] and knowing the issues that they were experiencing — a lot of it came from the skill gaps that were present in the sector. And that was actually hindering their ability to grow. I think from that we could see a gap in education. With the producers at the later stage, we had to really delve deeper and start educating young people and getting them excited about their food from a very early age. And I think making that accessible to everyone, especially in rural locations where accessibility to courses can be difficult. So, I think we really wanted to make sure that everybody had access to education and food and drink and an understanding where their food comes from.

Drew: It's clearly been a challenging journey to get here. What's been the biggest challenge or obstacle you’ve had to overcome?

Richard: On the back of working with Nairn Academy, where we developed and funded our own first masterclass, Skills Development Scotland spotted that and came to us and said, would you like to formalize this with us and offered us a contract with food and drink technologies. Which is basically years, five and six in schools. And the idea is that they get a full background and everything from the beginning of the food journey, right through to serving it up on a plate or taking it into a supermarket. The business has developed on the back of that.

Drew: Tell us something that people wouldn't necessarily know about the company.

Sarah: I think for a start a lot of people don't actually realize that we’re a not-for-profit organisation. A lot of people don't get the social enterprise, a lot of people either assume a sort of charity or they assume you're a private business entity. Actually we do both, we run a business and we make profit.

We invest it then to help disadvantaged young people. I feel like a lot of people don't actually realize that even with the cafe we quite often have to say it's actually a training cafe and then everybody goes “So what does that mean?” It's giving young people that real life experience and learning on the job which I think is really important from a vocational point of view. But also, I think for us, it's putting our money where our mouth is: we are trying to inspire a generation and say you could start up your own business in food and drink. We can actually say, well, we're doing it. And we can do it with them. And I think that's a really nice thing to have.

Listen to the full Video Podcast to learn more about Farmer Jones Academy and the passion for what they do.